


Mountain Sound

by allthebees (jamtomorrowandjamyesterday)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek and Laura roadtrip, Gen, sibling dynamics, six years and ten cities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:24:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1734356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamtomorrowandjamyesterday/pseuds/allthebees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Laura will spread the map out over the hood of the BMW and trace patterns across it with her finger while Derek goes to pay for gas. He'll click his teeth on his way back to the car and she'll look up just in time to catch the Snickers he tosses at her and flash a grin in response.</p>
<p>Sometimes he'll ask her where they're going. More often he won't.</p>
<p>She never says, anyway, because she doesn't know until they're there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Two siblings, a dozen ghosts and one secret stretched out across six years, ten cities and more broken promises than they can count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Los Angeles, California

**Author's Note:**

> Mountain Sound belongs to Of Monsters and Men and we'll blame them for the Hale feels as well.

_Laura Hale is six weeks and two days past her eighteenth birthday when Kate Argent burns their den down to the ground with their pack inside and her brother loses his mind.  
  
Her airways are thick with the lingering scent of smoke and wolfsbane and blood. Derek is curled into her side with half-lidded eyes and he trembles so hard that she has to brace herself so he doesn’t shake them right off the wobbly chairs in the sheriff’s station.  
  
A kind-faced deputy offers them a blanket and instant coffee and Derek trembles harder the closer the human gets so Laura shakes her head and gives them her cell number.  
  
“I’m going to take Derek to a hotel and get some sleep,” she says and her voice holds steady. “Thanks.”  
  
They don’t sleep. Derek trembles and whispers “Kate” over and over again and the missing pieces of a puzzle that has been frustrating Laura for months fall into place.  
  
She tears a pillow apart and howls into the mattress and tries to figure out how to put the broken pieces of her brother back together._  
  
  
 **Los Angeles, California**  
  
  
Derek hasn’t said more than “yes” or “no” or “Laura” since she bundled him into Peter’s silver BMW that she’s always wanted, but _never_ like this, and turned towards LA. Her eyes haze over, alpha red staining her vision, every time the air in the car shifts enough for the smell of Peter or Marcia or Sophie to hit her nose.  
  
There’s a truck behind them on the highway that’s been there since Beacon Hills and panic settles in when Laura switches lanes to take the wrong exit and they follow.  
  
“Derek,” she says and her heart is racing with the urge to shift and roar down the threat that has gone from the periphery of her awareness to the forefront. “Derek, they’re following us.”  
  
She can hear the way his heart skips and stumbles in terror and the way it takes too long to settle into anything approaching a proper rhythm again. He presses himself back against the seat and his claws dig through his sweats and into his thighs. “Kate,” he says faintly. “Is it Kate?”  
  
Laura doesn’t know so she doesn’t respond, taking a controlled turn onto one of the busier streets, and he opens the window. It takes only a handful of seconds before he goes rigid, nostrils flaring, and his breath catches.  
  
Laura can smell the perfume too.  
  
She takes the next turn back for the highway and presses a little harder on the accelerator. She drives and Derek huddles in the passenger seat and sometimes he shifts halfway and makes a whimpering noise that turns the blood in her veins to fire.   
  
“It’s okay,” she says and ignores the way his breath turns shallow at the sound of her voice. “It’s okay. We can lose them in the city, Derek, and she won’t get you. I promise. She won’t get you again.”  
  
*  
  
They don’t lose the hunters in the city because fake names and cash bribes aren’t enough to make up for the city overloading their senses.  
  
They don’t even make it a week before there’s mountain ash in the hallway outside their motel room and the silenced thuds of bullets through the flimsy wood of the door.  
  
Derek is launching himself at the door when the first bullet catches Laura in the thigh as she lunges towards him. It burns like only wolfsbane could and Laura’s knowledge of how painful it is to werewolves becomes decidedly untheoretical.  
  
The howl she lets loose is purely animal and Derek twists in midair. His expression is wide-eyed terror and disbelief and Laura can see the exact second the next bullet catches him high in the chest. The wood of the door splinters under his weight and then there’s a hail of bullets.  
  
Derek snarls, a blur of claws and blazing blue eyes as he scrambles in the circle they’ve put around the door, and Laura is caught between pain and fear and a crippling indecision about how to proceed. One of the hunters makes a mistake that costs him his life when he skitters backwards and his foot breaks the line.  
  
It only takes a split second for Derek’s claws to turns his throat to ribbons and make Laura’s decision for her. Her eyes burn red and she tastes blood.  
  
There are sirens in the distance, the panicked heartbeats of the only other room occupants six rooms down telling Laura how that happened, and blood is soaking the motel hallway by the time the last hunter falls. Kate isn’t there and Laura swipes the gun of the first hunter to fall for the bullets. She digs her claws into the back of Derek’s neck and hauls him towards the car before they’re seen.  
  
He stumbles but goes where she points him and they make it seven miles to an abandoned building before the adrenaline wears off and Laura realizes that there’s a bullet wound too close to Derek’s heart. There are tears burning at her eyes when she forces him, bleary and already pale, out of the car and towards the building. They’re barely over the threshold and out of sight from the street when Laura’s left leg buckles underneath her and she goes down to her knees with a pained howl.  
  
Derek doesn’t, _can’t_ , steady himself enough to keep upright and he wobbles for a second that seems a lot longer. His head bounces off the concrete floor with a sound that hits Laura somewhere in the chest and she’s scrabbling for the gun she’d grabbed off the dead hunter before she’s even realized that his eyes are sliding closed.  
  
Her hands are slippery with blood as she tries to unload the chamber of the gun. The four bullets that fall out roll in different directions but only as far as the crease between her useless leg and the ground and against the line of Derek’s side. She tears his shirt down the middle and chokes out a terrified “Derek? J-shit, Derek, wake up! _Derek_ -” when she sees the black lines inching across his chest.  
  
It takes her too long to find the lighter in Derek’s pocket and her hands are shaking too hard for her claws to be effective at cracking the bullets. She uses her teeth to pull one of them apart and tip the ashes into her blood-soaked palm. If she’d been human she would have burned her entire palm trying to get the flame from the lighter to catch.  
  
“No, no, Derek, come on,” she begs as she pushes the aconite ashes further into the wounds while Derek’s heartbeat hitches and stutters in her ears and underneath her fingers. Her thigh is burning but all she can concentrate on is how hot her brother’s blood is against her cool skin. “Come on, please, oh God. Don’t you dare do this to me-” her vision blurs with tears and she blinks them away with a furious snarl as she digs her fingertips in deeper. “Don’t you dare leave me, Derek, don’t you _dare-_ ”  
  
He arches up, fangs dropping with a howl and eyes suddenly open and burning blue, and then she’s sobbing with relief as the black veins recede in the opposite direction to his heart. She’s still sobbing when Derek pushes ashes into her thigh and it isn’t from the pain.  
  
*  
  
They run north and east before the hunters can regroup and they don’t stop until they hit Idaho. Even werewolf stamina has a threshold and both of them are well past theirs.  
  
Laura doesn’t let go of Derek’s hand, their palms and fingers still stained with flakes of blood, and Derek doesn’t say a word.  
  
  
 _I heard them calling in the distance._  
  



	2. Kamiah, Idaho

**Kamiah, Idaho**  
  
There’s a small town in Idaho, called Kamiah, that doesn’t have a proper pack. Laura can smell a pair of betas on the outskirts of the town but there isn’t a trace of an alpha and all it takes is one look at Derek, huddled down in the passenger seat and still lost somewhere in his own head, for her to decide to stop.  
  
Her phone sits on the bedside table in the motel room she pays for with crumpled bills and the blinking light on it feels like an accusation. There are half a dozen missed calls from a number she thinks is their lawyer and others from contacts with actual names.  
  
The text messages piling up in her inbox are getting more and more panicked, a few turning angry, and she doesn’t know how many days it’s been since the fire anymore. Her throat is thick and tight suddenly and she wavers on her feet for a second after she drops her sports bag at the foot of the bed.  
  
Derek doesn’t fight her when she points him towards the bathroom and she sits down heavily when she hears the squeak of the tap. He doesn’t close the door completely and Laura is absurdly and irrationally grateful that she can hear his heartbeat underneath the sound of running water without the door in the way.  
  
She still hears the sound of his head hitting concrete and the wet rasp of blood in his lungs every time it goes quiet and isn’t sure whether she’s ever going to stop seeing black lines spreading across his chest when she closes her eyes. When her phone starts vibrating insistently against the table she answers it.  
  
“Laura?” Marcus sounds equal parts pissed off and relieved. “Jesus, Laura, I thought you two had fallen off the face of the planet. Where are you?”  
  
“Some hunters found us,” she says and her voice comes out without inflection. “I can’t tell you that.”  
  
The sound of his heart skipping in alarm is clear and there’s a pang of something she doesn’t care to examine in her chest when she thinks about what his face would look like at that second. “Are you okay? Is Derek okay? What can I do to help you?”  
  
“We’re fine,” she says. “I can look after Derek.” Her fingers tighten around the phone and the plastic case creaks in warning. She loosens her grip and breathes out. “We’re fine.”  
  
“I’m working on the estate,” he says after a moment. His heartbeat has evened out a little. “They’re still investigating and the insurance company is throwing up red tape everywhere but I’m working on it. Can I talk to Derek? How’s he doing?”  
  
“He’s in the shower,” she says quietly and focuses on Derek’s heartbeat underneath the sound of the shower. It makes it easier for her to breathe. “I’ll tell him you said hi. Let me know if you get anywhere with anything, okay? I’m gonna go. We’re exhausted.”  
  
“Be careful.” Marcus sounds resigned. “And answer the phone next time Dana calls, okay? I’ll tell her that you’re okay but she’s a mess.”  
  
Laura doesn’t respond and just hangs up. She leaves the phone on the bedside table, kicks off her shoes, and wriggles further up the bed to stare at the ceiling while she ignores the rest of the messages and listens to the steady thump from the bathroom. Derek crawls underneath the covers, a familiar line of warmth against her side, a couple of minutes after the water cuts out.  
  
Eventually she curls into him and tucks her face against his shoulder as their breathing syncs. “Night, Derek,” she says against the fabric of his shirt.  
  
Derek rubs his cheek against her hair, just once, in silent acknowledgement.  
  
Laura misses his voice already.  
  
*  
  
Derek wakes up, drenched in a cold sweat, with a cut off howl and a racing heart. Kate’s laughter rings in his ears and he can’t see anything beyond the reflection of fire dancing in her eyes.  
  
Laura’s teeth are at the nape of his neck, chest rumbling with a warning where she presses against the curve of his spine, and the fight floods out of his body instantly. “You’re okay,” she murmurs around fangs that take longer than usual to recede. “You’re okay.”  
  
The third morning it happens she stops saying “you’re okay”.  
  
She’s already awake on the fourth morning.  
  
*  
  
The fifth morning Laura is sitting against the head of the bed, Derek curled beside her, when her senses start screaming at her because there are two wolves crossing the road their motel is on. She keeps her eyes from flaring but her claws come out instinctively and Derek flinches away from her touch when they pierce his forearm. She means to say sorry but doesn’t manage much more than an apologetic whine.  
  
Derek stays a little behind and to her left but she can feel him, a bundle of nerves jangling somewhere in the back of her mind, as she reaches for the door handle with fingernails that are more pointed than round.  
  
She isn’t expecting to see the two wolves with throats already bared and hands out, palms up, in a show of peace.  
  
Derek makes a noise of surprise and she’s too off-balance to suppress the rush of joy at even that much progress. The two wolves flash golden eyes and the female’s mouth turns up at the corners in the closest thing to a smile that Laura’s seen from anyone in what feels like months.  
  
“There’s a diner a block down if you’re hungry.”  
  
*  
  
“We’re sorry if we startled you,” the male wolf says when they’re settled in a booth. Derek is at Laura’s side and they’ve got their backs to the wall and good sightlines. “We were going to wait for you to approach us when you entered town but you didn’t and the full moon is tomorrow.”  
  
Laura stiffens in surprise. The full moon hasn’t even been a consideration and she knows that it’s going to be awful, their first alone and her first as alpha, and she feels the tremble that goes through Derek at the words.  
  
“I meant no disrespect,” she says and presses a little closer to Derek in wordless comfort. “We were just looking for a safe place to rest for a little while.”  
  
The female’s face softens a little. She looks to be in her thirties and she reminds Laura of her middle school Spanish teacher. “I’m Alicia. This is Zach. There’s plenty of room to run tomorrow night if you can share.”  
  
Zach still looks slightly wary but Laura doesn’t doubt Alicia’s sincerity. “Thank you.”  
  
*  
  
The full moon is slightly less awful than Laura had expected. Derek shifts early, before the moon starts to rise, and stays shifted. It gives her a stronger anchor and she holds her own change at bay, even through the trembling as her blood surges with the power that her skin is barely containing, until the moon hangs high in the sky.  
  
Alicia finds them not long after Laura finally gives in to the change. She stops just out of striking range and flashes gold eyes. Derek’s fingers, tipped with claws, splay out over the small of her back in wordless reminder and she shakes her head to clear it.  
  
Zach joins them once Laura’s control evens out and the four run until the sun begins to break the horizon.  
  
*  
  
Marcus calls again four nights after the full moon and Laura barely hesitates before answering it.  
  
“I meant to call earlier,” he says apologetically. “Things have been crazy here. Did you two do okay?”  
  
“It’s okay. We did fine,” Laura says and glances over to where Derek is sprawled out over the bed and frowning at the television. The latest episode of Supernatural is on and she’s wondering whether he’ll break his silence to fill her in on what she’s missing when Marcus starts speaking again.  
  
“I’m glad. I called to tell you that I’m getting closer with the estate,” he says. “Custody is basically ironclad now. You’re going to have to get Derek back into school after the New Year or figure something out that the courts are happy with but you’ve got a couple months to sort that out.”  
  
Derek tenses up across the room but doesn’t take his focus off the television. Laura’s heart skips a beat or two at the thought of not having him within arm’s reach at all times.  
  
Marcus promises to call back if there’s any more progress. He asks Laura to call Dana again and Laura makes a vague sound that could be agreement but just as easily not. She doesn’t feel like making a promise she isn’t sure she wants to keep. She hangs up and throws herself back onto the bed, half-sprawled on Derek, and lifts an eyebrow at him with a nod at where an ad is playing.  
  
“I miss anything good?”  
  
He shrugs and leans his head against her silently. She swallows back the disappointment.  
  
*  
  
Alicia and Zach look understanding and only a little sad when Laura says, a week later, that it’s time for them to move on. Zach is, surprisingly, the one who tells them that they’re welcome back if they need shelter again.  
  
Derek surprises her even more by offering most of a smile to the beta couple and a nod of thanks.  
  
That’s nothing to the tidal wave of emotion when they’re in the car and putting Kamiah in the rearview mirror.  
  
His hand settles over hers on the gearstick and she darts a look at him out of the corner of her eye in question. He licks at his lips and clears his throat. The quiet “I’m sorry,” comes out hoarse but she thinks it’s the most welcome sound she’s ever heard in her life.  
  
  
 _So I packed my things and ran._  



End file.
